Educational information, not medical advice — ask your doctor or midwife.
Chenopodium strictum is a weedy annual plant in the amaranth family. It is often called late-flowering goosefoot. It grows on waste ground, field edges and roadsides across Europe, Asia and North America.
It is a close relative of lamb's quarters (Chenopodium album). Like that plant, its young leaves have been eaten as a cooked green. The seeds are small, dark and starchy.
As a remedy it has very little standing of its own. No human trials test it, so any health use is unproven. Traditional use is not proof that a plant works, and it is not proof that it is safe.
Nobody has shown how Chenopodium strictum acts in the human body.
Lab work on the wider goosefoot group gives a few hints. In test-tube studies, extracts of related Chenopodium species mop up free radicals. Whether that does anything useful in a person is not known.
Some goosefoot species contain saponins, soap-like plant compounds. In test tubes, saponins can break open cells and slow some microbes. That is a laboratory finding only.
One point about this plant family matters more than any mechanism. Wormseed (Chenopodium ambrosioides) carries ascaridole, a toxic oil.
C. strictum is not known to hold that oil in the same way, but these plants are easy to mix up.
You will rarely see Chenopodium strictum sold as a supplement at all.
Where it is used, the forms are simple:
- Fresh young leaves and shoots, boiled or steamed as a green - Dried leaf, brewed as a folk tea - Seeds, soaked, rinsed and cooked like a small grain - Crushed leaf, laid on the skin in some folk reports
There is no standard extract, no tested strength and no agreed quality mark. Jars labelled only "Chenopodium" may hold a different species. Always check the full botanical name on the label.
Chenopodium strictum has a thin written record as a medicine.
Across Europe and Asia, goosefoots were mainly famine food. People ate the young leaves and ground the seeds in lean years. Folk writers sometimes listed the leaves for mild stomach upset or for sores on the skin.
Most of that record names Chenopodium album or wormseed, not this species. Where C.
strictum appears, it was usually gathered as a stand-in. Old herbalists treated the goosefoots as one loose group.
When to see a doctor: stop using the plant and get medical advice if anything below happens.
- Pain in your side or lower back, or blood in your urine; these can signal a kidney stone - You are passing much less urine than usual - Vomiting that will not stop, or severe stomach pain - A spreading rash, swollen lips or tongue, or trouble breathing
Call emergency services at once if a baby's lips, face or fingertips turn blue or grey. The same applies to breathing trouble or swelling of the throat in anyone.
In the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union, Chenopodium strictum is not an approved medicine. The leaves count as an ordinary wild food, and no health claim is authorised for it. It is not a controlled plant, but no official body has reviewed it for safety as a supplement.
Evidence grades and traditional-use labels are explained in our methodology. Nothing here is medical advice.
What it is typically used for, usual dose, cautions, and the study behind it where real trial data exists.
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